Kirby Smart on college football’s future
Kirby Smart urges leaders to prioritize the game’s future over personal or conference agendas in playoff talks.
Sacred cows often wind up served on platters, carved up by the butcher’s knife known as the almighty dollar.
College football uniforms are a sacred cow, so I wasn’t surprised when I read recently in the Baton Rouge Advocate that LSU wants to butcher its uniform by adding a sponsorship patch to the jersey, in exchange for money.
While traditionalists and purists cry foul over this development, I shrugged my shoulders. This is the way the world works. The New York Yankees slapped an insurance company logo on their iconic uniforms in exchange for tens of millions, and the Chicago Cubs sold a spot on their jerseys to a telecommunications company.
Why would college football be any different?
Tucked away inside a dresser drawer, I have my old summer league baseball uniforms from junior high. There’s a Flentje’s Plumbing logo in the upper corner of those purple shirts. Nothing prohibited my seventh-grade baseball summer league team from selling off uniform real estate to the local plumber. (The plumber’s son was our ace pitcher, a lefty with a live fastball and a durable arm.)
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For now, NCAA rules prohibit schools from putting sponsorship logos on their jerseys. The apparel company that makes the jersey puts its logo on college uniforms. The uniforms also feature conference logos and school branding, but, thus far, no sponsorship logos.
I expect that to change.
Until last year, sponsorship logos weren’t allowed on fields. As soon as that changed, deals were struck. Money makes the world go ’round, and money puts paint on grass.
Tennessee painted the Pilot Corporation logo onto the field at Neyland Stadium, and Arkansas welcomed logos for Walmart and Tyson Foods onto the field at Razorback Stadium. LSU will add sponsorship logos to the field at Tiger Stadium, the Advocate reported.
Those sponsorships are good for business. The athletic departments get paid, and attendance didn’t suffer at Tennessee games just because a petroleum corporation’s logo dotted the 25-yard lines.
Uniform sponsorship logos would result in additional profit for the business. Let’s not kid ourselves, that’s what college football is – business. Big business.
In this pay-for-play era of college athletics, uniforms became a work outfit, and sponsorships help pay the business expenses.
If the NCAA allowed sponsorship patches on uniforms, it would generate “multiple millions of dollars a year” for LSU, a school official told the Advocate.
And that’s how a sacred cow becomes a tasty meal, served for profit.
Blake Toppmeyer is the USA TODAY Network’s national college football columnist. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.